Schroder: A Novel (20 page)

We arrived in St. Johnsbury in the late afternoon. April pulled up to a coffee shop across from a white New England public academy and took Meadow inside to use the bathroom. School was letting out for the day, buses lined up along the street, parents gathering slowly.

I sat and watched the parents gather. Several of them wore muddy work clothes and trucker hats. Some of the women were visibly pregnant. They stood together, murmuring. I rolled down the window and tried not to stare.

A flash of blond hair behind the café window. Meadow had turned around and was talking to someone I could not see in the interior of the coffee shop. A waitress? She was nodding. What was she being asked? She reached out her hands, accepting something.

Say it, I thought. Go ahead and say whatever they teach you to say to save yourself.

Then there was April behind the glass, smiling through fresh lipstick, joking, explaining, scooting Meadow along. Cowbells jangled. A man on the street tipped back his hat, and out came my daughter, holding a donut.

RAGGED MOUNTAIN

We arrived at the camp in darkness. In the headlights, the place looked as if someone had extracted an apartment from the worst Dorchester housing project and rebuilt it cinder block by cinder block in the middle of a field in New Hampshire, and then covered it up with dirt, like a cairn. The car ground to a halt and our tense silence acquired another layer. April shoved the gearshift into park, took a tube of lipstick out of her purse, and ran it back and forth across her lower lip.

“Well,” she said, “if you think it looks bad now, you should see it in the light of day.”

“Somebody lives here?” Meadow wanted to know.

“Sure. My cousin raised both his kids here. The setting is really pretty. Over that way”—she gestured into the darkness—“there’s a little brook with real fish. And that way, a hill they liked to sled on. They had everything. A vegetable garden. Tomatoes. Carrots. Dill. Bird feeders. A smokehouse. It was real country living.” She turned to me. “You ever heard of the back-to-the-earth movement? Those couples who sold
everything and made their houses out of fieldstones and all their kids ran around naked and they just lived off the land?”

I nodded, still unable to speak.

“Well, I think my cousin was going for something like that. It all went to hell, of course, but you can’t blame him for trying. There were good times. I used to come out here with my boyfriends. I even brought J.J. Torraine from the Minor Miracles, back in the day. All
right
.” She clapped her hands. “Let’s go in. Leave those headlights on, would you, so we can see. You can carry my duffel, John. And you—little Miss Butterfly—well, you bring your bucket.”

In this way, April motivated us out of our paralysis, and we walked toward the structure in a single line, illuminated in the headlights. In front of me, Meadow’s skinny legs marched below the sagging hem of her oversized sweatshirt. The tag on the back of the neckline was sticking out. Suddenly there was the snap of a sizeable branch as something large moved in the woods. We froze.

“What the hell was that?” I whispered.

I saw Meadow’s expression in the lights—frightened, but also defiant, almost satisfied. Like she was thinking, just you go ahead and try me.

“A moose, probably,” April said, working on the padlock that hung from the front door. From what I could see, the camp’s door was some piece of leather-covered salvage, ornamented with brass bolts, as if it had been pillaged from a church.

When April turned on the lights, we found ourselves in the midst of a strange room. Strewn with small domestic artifacts, left in a hurry, it seemed like some Pompeiian scene, something almost curated—there was a book opened on a table, a worn dog bed still holding its rump-sized impression,
and a number of coats hanging from hooks along the wall. Other than these objects, the room was not pretty. The carpeting was of a dark, indoor/outdoor variety, the cinder blocks were unpainted even in the interior, and the drop ceiling was missing one or two panels, revealing strips of pink insulation and wiring. The room seemed to function as an all-purpose family room, with cabinets, a countertop, a propane tank, and what looked like an icebox lined up on the far wall, serving as the kitchen. It was clear that the place had been built and maintained by someone who did not know what he was doing. As confirmation of this fact, a large aluminum canoe, pushed up against the far wall and filled with cushions, seemed the only discretionary piece of furniture in the room.

“Your bed,” April said, gesturing to the canoe.

“A canoe? I’m sleeping in that canoe?”

“What? He took the bars out of it.”

Here I laughed, a little aggressively. “And what does Meadow get to sleep in? A kayak?”

“No, she gets a couple bales of hay out back.” April rolled her eyes. “Kidding. She gets a nice little bed, right there through that door. My cousin saved the best for his kids. But he liked to sleep in a canoe. I never asked why.”

“Sure. Ha. Why pry?”

“You’ve got a problem with this place, John Toronto?”

“No,” I said, rubbing my head. “No.”

April turned to Meadow. “Hon, go ahead, through that door. Go see your room.”

Meadow stepped forward. I could see that her reaction to the strange home was the same as mine: What had
happened
to these people? Where had they gone so quickly? It made you
think they had been endangered, but not for anything they did. Just because they were a family, and the chances were somehow cosmically against their togetherness. She pushed back the accordion door toward which she’d been directed and turned on the light with her shirtsleeve. That room glowed in a warmer, less fluorescent light, revealing a bunk bed and a red beanbag chair. April and I came to the door.

“Like it, hon?”

Meadow nodded.

“I know there’s some toys around here. Good ones. Do you like Lincoln Logs? Look.” April pulled a sagging box from a shelf and dropped it on the floor. “I always liked to build when I was your age. Do you like to build shit?”

Meadow nodded. She reached into the box and began to remove the notched plastic logs. When she seemed absorbed, April stood up and wiped her hands.

“All righty,” she said, and walked out.

I followed her into the kitchen area. She opened some cabinets.

“Yum,” she said, “baked beans.”

“This is kind of you,” I said. “Very, very kind.”

She shrugged. She pulled a can opener from the coffee can in which it stood, and ground away at the tin top. The can opened. She sniffed inside.

“If you don’t mind, I’d love it if you watched your language around the girl.”

“You watch your language,” said April. “
You’re
the fucking outlaw.”

“You have a right to be mad at me,” I said.

“I’m not mad, OK? Just hungry and tired.”

“She
is
my daughter, you know. I didn’t steal her. And I’d never hurt her.”

“I don’t want to hear about it.”

“The problem is between me and my ex. She tried to keep me from seeing her. And now, if I go back, I bet I’ll never see her again.”

Sighing, April plugged in the hot plate and sloshed two cans of beans into a frying pan. I reached into the coffee can and gave her a spoon.

“Thanks,” she said.

“I’ll tell you what I’m guilty of. I am guilty of—I am guilty of exceeding my legally allotted visitation period. That’s it. And stealing a car. And falsifying my entire identity.” Here, I laughed. A long, wrung-out laugh, a laugh long delayed. I laughed so long and with such rue that April passed me a dishrag to wipe my eyes. I had to lean with both hands against the countertop until I could pull myself together.

“Thanks,” I said, slowing to a chuckle. “Thanks. Thank you.”

“Here,” she said, getting another spoon from the coffee can and dipping it into the beans. “Take. Eat. This is my body.”

She put the spoon in my mouth. The beans were sweet and warm.

“Thank you,” I said, leaning against her. “Thank you so much.”

The spoon and the pot in her hands, she couldn’t hug me back. I stood there against her anyway, my nose in her hair.

“Hi,” I said.

“Focus, John. Set the table.”

She handed me another spoon. I went to the table and took
another look around the room. In a flash, I thought, it’s not so bad. We could stay here for a little if we had to. It wouldn’t take much to make it nicer. A couple of gallons of paint, a sheepskin rug, lamplight maybe.

“So are you sure your cousin won’t be back tonight?”

“Yes, I’m sure.”

“When will he be back?”

“Unless he gets parole, not for four more years.”

I turned and stared at her. “He’s in jail?”

“Oh, John. Don’t look so shocked. Look, you’re breaking my heart.”

April turned off the hot plate, walked over to me, and took my face in her hands.

“Poor John,” she said, kissing me on both cheeks. “You are the worst criminal I’ve ever known.”

I fell against her. We leaned on each other, equal weights. I felt my throat tighten. I covered my eyes with my hands.

“I’m a mess,” I said, into her hair. “A disaster. Everything I touch turns to shit.”

“No. I’m sure that’s not true.”

“I just wanted some time with my daughter. I just wanted to have a vacation with my daughter.
I
wanted to decide that. I’m her
father
. I taught her to
read
. I stayed up with her when she was sick. There’s been a mistake here, you know—a very grave mistake—a miscarriage—”

“You should have gone to court or something. You should have gotten a better lawyer or something. You shouldn’t have nabbed your own daughter.”

“Please.” I pushed her away gently. “Please don’t take the other side. The whole world is going to take the other side.”

“Don’t flatter yourself. The whole world won’t be paying attention. Miss Butterfly?”

Meadow’s voice sounded small from the farther room. “Yes?”

“Would you like some dinner?”

“No, thank you.”

“You should eat.”

“I’m not hungry, thank you.”

April rolled her eyes. “I’m not even going to say anything. All she eats is donuts. When is the last time she had a vegetable?”

Grinning, I took up my spoon. “You know what? My wife would like you, if she knew you. Even though you’re pretty much polar opposites. I think she would like you. At least, she’d be grateful to you for looking after Meadow.”

April lifted a heap of baked beans on her spoon and blew on it. “Quit looking so grateful. It’s not like I’m in love with you.”

I grinned. “I should have married you. I should have married someone like you. I should have married a woman with a sense of humor.”

“I don’t need to get married. I’ve already got a rock song named after me.”

I watched her across the table, one hand pinning back her hair, her lips blowing little rapid puffs toward her spoon.

“Hey. Do you want to—” I gestured toward the canoe. “After—”

Now April laughed. “Ho-di-ho-
ho
. I’m not having any more sex with you, Toronto. Especially not in a canoe. The only thing I’m going to do with my ass tonight is save it.”

“Oh. OK. That’s too bad.”

“It
is
too bad, you know.”

“I like you very much.”

This seemed to make April a little sad. “Hey. How about you go put your kid to bed? We’ll catch up after that. Here. Bring her these.” She pushed a bowl of beans across the table. “She’s probably starving, but too mad to say so. If I were you, I might try to make things right, while I had a chance. Say what you need to. After a lot of trial and error I found the ‘truth will out,’ as they say.”

I sat there for a moment.

“Sorry,” she said. “Did I overstep?”

“No. No, you didn’t. In fact, I was—I was thinking the same thing.”

I stood up. I walked to the door of Meadow’s room. Then I stopped and came back and put my hand on the back of April’s neck. I looked down at her big face, and I smiled. There was a pause—and I mention it here because, well, it was distinctly un-Pinteresque—light, merciful, safe.

“Everything about you is big,” I told her.

“Thanks, I guess.”

“Yes, it’s a compliment. You’re just a little bit
more
than most people.”

And that was the last time I ever saw April A.

Who’s gonna wanna be your lover next time?

April had been right about the White Mountains. There was something about them, something mysterious, legend making.
We had driven through their southern boundary all that afternoon into the evening, along the Kancamagus. To our left rose the promontories of the Franconia Range. The wind was high, and you could feel it hit the car. The silence was broken only when April would say, gesturing with her chin, “There’s Moosilauke. And that one’s Osceola.”
Moosilauke. Osceola.
Words Meadow and I would have laughed about, had we been on speaking terms. I knew that Mount Washington towered to the north of us. But we couldn’t go there, not anymore. Not in the spirit we had intended.